Sam Bankman-Fried has has been on trial for fraud and money laundering for just over four weeks, and the case seems to be finally coming to an end. The prosecution began its closing arguments on Wednesday. it was the defense’s turn after lunch.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos stood before the jury from 10 a.m. ET until the court broke for lunch around 1 p.m., restating the prosecution’s case: Bankman-Fried lied, made false promises, and is responsible for billions of dollars lost to thousands of investors in FTX . And besides, this Bankman-Fried had many chances to clean up, but he didn’t.
In a particularly dramatic moment, Roos pointed to the accused and said: “Who is responsible? That man: Samuel Bankman-Fried.” The former FTX CEO didn’t look back, but tilted his head slightly.
Meanwhile, Mark Cohen, lead attorney for Bankman-Fried, said the government is making a Hallmark movie-like case against Bankman-Fried and that it made “poor business judgments.”
“The government tried to paint Sam as some kind of evil, some kind of monster,” Cohen said, using a soft voice. He said the prosecution highlighted his appearance, the $30 million condo in the Bahamas where he lived with other executives, his celebrity status and his sex life. The prosecution did this, Cohen said, “to make him someone you dislike … instead of making the case.”
His looks, romantic relationships or being the “worst dressed CEO” have nothing to do with whether he’s guilty, Cohen said. “Every movie needs a villain… they wrote him as [one].”
The prosecutor emphasized how it was wrong for FTX to use clients’ funds without their knowledge or approval. “It was a universal view: customer funds belong to customers and cannot be used,” Roos said, adding that even FTX’s terms of service stated that user deposits belonged to users.
According to the evidence, there was a “huge discrepancy between what FTX said it had for clients versus what it actually had” and how billions of dollars were missing, Roos said. “It’s not about complicated encryption [terms]. This is cheating. These are lies. This is theft. greed.”
